Pieter du Toit's piece last week made out a convincing case that "criminality, poverty and graft" could kill off the ANC. The end could, as he suggested, be coming "inexorably closer". This once undreamed of prospect is now on the table. Whether it will come about, time will tell. With the ravages of unresolved Covid-19 and recent social unrest in painful memory, this is certainly the right moment to plan for such an eventuality.
What we need now is more stability, not less. We should be careful to ensure that the best talent found within the ANC is retained and not thrown out with the bathwater. Those who see no good in the ANC at all are forgetting history and giving in to their emotions. It is the party of notable figures like Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan and Thabo Mbeki, et al, and not the grubby poseurs who have all but ruined it.
Cyril Ramaphosa has miraculously emerged to take up constructively where Zuma destroyed. Let's not forget that.
Having worked previously as a special adviser to an ANC government and Presidency over 22 years, I met the best and the worst that could be dished up by a democratic government anywhere.
Bad starts to our democracy
Governance is a human institution and can be tugged in different directions. It can be well run, captured by criminals or the military, made ineffective by party dullards, or bankrupted by greedy incompetents. Don't we know!
The fundamental pity of post-apartheid South Africa is that serious wrongdoing was not firmly nipped in the bud in the early Mandela years. Except for fluke events such as the arrest of an ANC chief whip and well-connected others brought spasmodically, even reluctantly, to book. The very early Travelgate and school feeding scandals, plus dubious events such as the arms deal, and Sarafina 11, were bad starts for our democracy.
Too many ruling party figures got off lightly or totally.
To draw morally equivalent parallels, however compelling in debate, over damning private sector scandals, is not totally relevant to the wholesale stealing of taxpayers' money. Private business has its own risks the world over. Investment therein is voluntary, yet government taxes are compulsory, a matter of public trust when it comes to their disposal honestly or dishonestly.
Now the pendulum is at last, after nearly a generation of flawed democracy, turning in a better direction, with the glow of orange prison garb a suitable nightmare to keep our gangs of current crooks awake. And, hopefully, squealing on one another in independent senior courts.
The really welcome turning point was when President Ramaphosa, by a whisker, managed to succeed the previous incumbent, who was bent, almost double, by graft - with unwelcome foreign conspirators enriching themselves beyond their dreams, then vamoosing from South African justice to hide abroad to this day.
Most of us know that awful story, and we are fortunate that the meticulous deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo and his superb investigatory staff are expected soon to throw light on what actually went wrong. May the perpetrators, enablers and beneficiaries of state capture sit long years in prison. May there be a consequential cleanout in the ANC.
What we must not lose sight of is that we are lucky to have a president who stayed the course, edging us towards sanity and salvation—and doing it his way, step by step, with setbacks and windfalls.
The reality is, even if the ANC were to succeed in euthanising itself, something better - not worse - would have to be invented to replace it. That could take years, with South Africa by then in unquenchable flames. Rather, start the realignment of our politics with Ramaphosa still there, and with up to eight more years to serve. He is the only person sighted in our politics who has the gumption, and support in the country, to turn ANC decline to national advantage.
National centrist government
In that event, the best option would be Ramaphosa heading a national centrist government, with the best available talent chosen to serve as ministers irrespective of which party they come from. It could amount to a grand coalition, strictly sans the adolescent populists whose only language is wrecking and trashing Nelson Mandela's spirit.
In view of the disturbing recent social unrest and continuing Covid-19, this is just the right moment to strike. As they say, it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.
Such a national government would be well placed to secure what is now urgent: a Marshall Aid-type plan, reminiscent of the $15 billion the US Congress voted to save a Europe in ruins after the Allied bombing in the Second World War. This should be seen not as charity but as potential blue chip investment in a still promising country - cash from abroad to rebuild South Africa, and to help secure peace and stability in Africa.
Sadly Nelson Mandela, a leader with no equal in our history, amid the global preoccupations of the age (eg end of the Cold War), was denied such levels of international assistance to rebuild after apartheid.
Financially astute Trevor Manuel, already working with Ramaphosa on a serious investment drive, would be ideal to steer the further effort to success.
Once bitten by rampant corruption, we would have to ensure that the money is spent without the blight of corruption that marked especially the Zuma years. Not easy, all this. But just consider the alternatives: more of the same, social trouble and ruin in our own land? Ramaphosa gone. No thanks. Let's grab the chance before it fades.
- Tony Heard was editor of the Cape Times, 1971-87. His book on his time advising government and Presidency, "8 000 Days", was published last year.
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